Reference Letters and TAs

I am finding more and more that students that I have never met are asking me for letters of reference. These are students who have attended my lectures, but have never had me as a seminar leader. These students have gone through their university careers instructed mostly by part-time contract employees. So they are in an awkward situation when it comes to requesting reference letters as the part-timers tend to be transient and anyway their lack of academic qualifications weakens the authoritativeness of their recommendation letters.

Undoubtedly the quality of education these students have received is inferior to that that students I taught in my early years at Brock received when classes were much smaller and direct interaction with tenured faculty was more the norm. This is a serious concern and a source of considerable regret to me.

The Principles of Psalm 72 Inform My Life's Work

A Psalm for Solomon.

1  Give the king thy judgments, O God, and thy righteousness unto the king’s son.

2 He shall judge thy people with righteousness, and thy poor with judgment.

3 The mountains shall bring peace to the people, and the little hills, by righteousness.

4 He shall judge the poor of the people, he shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor.

5 They shall fear thee as long as the sun and moon endure, throughout all generations.

6 He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass: as showers that water the earth.

7 In his days shall the righteous flourish; and abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth.

Observation on the U.S. Election Result

President-elect Obama won 52.9% of the popular vote in the recent U.S. general election.  So close to half of the voters did not vote for Obama.

It makes me wonder about the electoral process in liberal democracies.  The results are often very close.  Why is this?  To my mind one would expect that in the course of a campaign one candidate and his policies would emerge is clearly superior to that of his rivals.  I would therefore expect result to be say more than 70% in favour of one over the others.  But it rarely seems to work that way.

It makes me question how really "democratic" our election system is.  But that being said it is clearly the best system compared to all others currently existing.